I switched from LaunchBar 5 to Alfred 2 almost 18 months ago. I like the convenience of creating custom actions in Alfred but I missed LaunchBar’s file actions. Now I’m a man caught between two worlds. LaunchBar 6 brings a nice redesign and a huge number of built-in actions. It also brings an opportunity for custom extensions.
The first custom extension I really found useful was Jay Gillibrand’s Pinboard actions. This extension adds global search, lookup by tag, list 25 most recent, and list all unread bookmarks (see screenshot above).
Path Finder 7 is probably coming out later this year but Path Finder 6 is already a great application. It can be hard to appreciate why you might need a better file browser than the Finder, so let me cast a spotlight on one simple feature of Path Finder: Saved Views.1
Several of my file management tasks are repetitive and involve the same handful of folders. For example, purging old screenshots and bad photos generally involves a directory on my NAS, my Dropbox “Camera Uploads” folder and a folder where I capture screenshots on my Mac.
You’ll probably want the next Field Guide by David Sparks. I like the new design and it’s about a topic that most people struggle with. There’s so much bad presentation technology out there. David has a lot of experience presenting and I suspect he knows a thing or two about doing it well.
I also really love that Apple recognizes how unique and thoughtful his work is. What an awesome URL.
Curio is a terrific application for the Mac. It’s a general purpose planning, scheduling, diagramming, note-taking and mind mapping tool. Version 9 is out now and it’s a $50 upgrade for owners of the previous version. This is one of those tools I return to again and again.
The new version has been redesigned and already is geared toward Yosemite. I like the new artboard1 for project pages. Throw lots of stuff on one and it acts as an idea space inside an idea space.
Clark Goble has a quick summary of his thoughts about Swift:
Here are my initial thoughts. First it has most of the features I’d want in a language. It also incorporates a lot of C++ features like generics and overloading that I think can be abused. However overall I’m very excited about the language. More significantly it really allows a degree of interactive development in Xcode that is startling. (Going by the keynote demo and not anything NDAed)
Great story by Brent Simmons:
How much of this creative period was due to Frontier itself and how much to Dave?
I think it works like this: Dave was creative and productive, and he had built for himself an environment where he could move very quickly and try lots of things. Each layer built on top of other layers, and he was able to work at a very high level.
Patrick describes a relatively simple way to take notes about an audiobook while walking around. But I really like this sentiment:
I know this so-called workflow isn’t for everyone. Serious/professional readers might even shake their head in disbelief. My girlfriend constantly snickers when I tell her that I’ve finished another book, but some people tend to judge and you might even get a little hate. All I can say is, that in my book it doesn’t matter how you engage with literature, as long as you do it.
From Moving Electrons comes a nice tip about executing remote commands over SSH from Pythonista. It’s simple in design:
Connects to the server. Executes the command passed as an argument to the script in Pythonista in the remote server (more info in the following section). Once the command is run, it disconnects from the server. Of course, this requires a remotely accessible Mac. I have some similar things I do with my hosts at Webfaction.
Here’s a great post on the Hazel forums. I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff. It’s nice seeing how others prioritize their fiddling. Photo management is one of the most personal tasks and the variability from person to person is significant.
Lawson Kurtz outlines some requirements and conclusions for a series of screenshot apps for the Mac. Check the comments for apps that were missed. I never realized Monosnap supported so many platforms, but it looks good too.1 Certainly Droplr should be on the list.
I think that the one additional requirement I’d throw on the list is access from mobile (like iOS) that works for upload and browsing.
It’s interesting that the custom solution linked at the end is basic S3 upload.
